I've been doing a lot of thinking lately after Sammy's recent post on her blog about how she met her daddy. And I've been thinking about where I've come from, and where I'm going.

I apologize in advance. What is below is VERY long. I'm just kind of using this blog as a place to think out loud about myself.

Seeing blogs like Sammy's and Maya Papaya's have really made me think about what my AB/DL side is like. I don't know Maya very well, but Sammy has been VERY active in describing the sort of dichotomy between her big self and her...well, little self, I suppose. But she clearly identifies her AB/DL side as being 2 years old, and has an interesting way of looking at that side and how she came to be.

So I've been thinking...what age am I? What qualities do I have? Where did I come from?

Well, for starters, my childhood was decent enough. It wasn't great, but I've seen worse. My parents split when I was about 3 or 4. Not a noisy divorce, but they very clearly did NOT like each other. I grew up in an otherwise very loving home though, though I remember as a kid I used to be afraid of a LOT of things (the basement, the closet, under the bed, the woods, the dark, etc.). I was toilet trained at around 3 or so, not strange for the day, though apparently I seemed to have wanted to stay in diapers longer, but my mother just set up a system apparently largely based around how much I liked watching He-Man and She-Ra that resulted in me HAVING to know how to use the bathroom to watch either.

I remember that when I was about 5 or so I went to a day care center that had children of several different ages, ranging from about 3 to 6. It had its own bathroom set off to the side that had regular toilets, a potty, and a diaper changing table. I remember always being kind of interested in the diapers and the potty, despite being more than old enough to use a the regular toilet without help. I think my association with diapers and disabilities might have started there, since I recall that there was a boy there who was fairly severly mentally handicapped (wore a hockey helmet all the time, got pulled around in a wagon at recess...I think he was in another room at the daycare, though), but I'm pretty sure he wore diapers as well. But I'm not really sure. But I also remember there was something really interesting about him, how he acted and how he was treated.

When I was about 5 or 6 my mother remarried a high school sweetheart who was noted for once trying to challenge my father to a fistfight after work because he felt that dad had stolen his girlfriend (my mother). My late stepfather...wasn't the brightest guy on the block. And he certainly made it clear that I didn't meet up to any of his expectations for a son. I think a part of my infantalism/wannabe/pretender/devotee stuff comes from that, that in a house where emotional and verbal abuse was common (rarely physical, though, and then only when I actually HAD done something wrong, like the time I mouted off at dinner about not liking the food, or when I broke a book end when I climbed up a window to close it). I think what I really wanted was to retreat to something simpler, the younger days when it was just mom and me in a townhouse together, and I felt loved and carefree.

My school life didn't help matters, I suppose. "Learning disabled" was putting it mildly. I was illiterate until the age of 7, and it wasn't until grade 8 or 9 when I actually learned to spell properly (not that my spelling was REALLY bad, but it was pretty bad). I never learned to handwrite, and was actually in a learning disabilities class for the entirety of elementary school, despite my mother arguing that it wasn't nessecary. So, needless to say, I was picked on at school. A lot. My class was technically classified as "special ed", so we went to all sorts of regional special ed-only events. Like where all the special ed classes in the Vancouver and Tri-City area rented Playland (the local amusement park) for the day, or went on a cruise. By that time I was really starting to feel an attraction to being in a wheelchair, mainly becuase most of the kids my age I saw on these field trips weren't learning disabled, but rather so physically or mentally handicapped that they were in independent special education classrooms...and thus often required a great deal of supervision and care. I remember on the cruise that I accidentally stepped into the room that had been designated for diaper changes...I really can't remember what I saw, but I DO recall that I saw someone my age being changed. Its funny how you forget things like that till you really think about them.

When I was about 7 or 8, my daycare (I was at a different one by that time) went to the pool, and I frequently saw mentally and physically handicapped people in the washrooms with caregivers (I think we were there on the same day as the assisted living program or something like that). My first major meeting with someone older than me and disabled in diapers was when we were getting changed for the pool. A group was just coming out, and the attendant to a teenage boy was taking off his swimming trunks while he sat down, then removed an adult diaper and taped it on him. When I asked why he wore diapers, the attendant said that he couldn't control his bladder.

Something about that meeting really galvanized me. Now I REALLY wanted to wear diapers. Not just a little, like before, but it was almost a need. And it was strongly associated with being disabled, and soon got linked into my odd desire to be in a wheelchair. I remember praying (yeah, I was raised Christian as a child, and was so afraid of anything bad happening to anyone I knew that I'd pray every single night that...well...nothing bad would happen) one night that I would wake up, and I wouldn't be able to walk, and I'd need diapers. This wasn't an overly coherent prayer, mind you, nor was I an overly coherent child at the tender age of 7 or 8.

I was pretty emotional as a kid. I wore my emotions on my sleeve (I was tested as a child as having some autistic tendencies, one of which was very low emotion filters...I seem to have mellowed out as I've grown older, but as a kid it was pretty bad). When I was sad, I'd cry. When I was mad, I'd hit something (or someone...and not well, I'd just grab them or slug them). My father moved to Toronto when I was 6 or 7 to live with his new wife, and whenever I came back from a visit with him, either in Vancouver or Toronto, I'd cry my eyes out for days on end whenever I thought about him. I did the same thing the first few times I visited my mom when I moved out to Toronto and would go back to visit her. I still feel really sad when I leave BC each time, but I don't cry much anymore.

I think my fantasy life grew a lot stronger in grade 6 when I changed schools to one closerer to our house in BC, and was no longer going to school with my little clique of friends. I honestly had no clue how to MAKE friends at that point. I was terrified about not being able to dress like everyone else, terrified that I wouldn't fit in becuase I didn't know anything about sports...etc. Well, I didn't fit in at all, and spent a great deal of time hunkering down in doorways (we weren't allowed inside at lunch or recess), reading and trying to avoid people. I really drew myself in. That was also the year that my late stepfather started down his path to being...well...late. He had a rare blood condition that I don't quite understand that resulted in numerous bloodclots forming in his brain, causing what amounted to a large number of small strokes, increasing in magnitude. He was put into rehab (which he never made his way out of before he wound up in ICU, hooked up to life support, which was eventually removed [good riddance to him]), so my mom was out of the house a LOT, and I was forced to fend for myself a lot. Not cooking for myself, but I spent a lot of time home alone.

I remember in grade 5 reading two books on people with disabilities. One was a children's book called "Who Takes Care of Disabled People?". There was a picture of a girl wearing a bib, covered in food, at the dinner table, in a wheelchair. Somehow THAT image really stuck with me. The other I don't know the name of, but it was 5 stories of people with disabilities making lives for themselves (I recall vaugley one about a private eye who had lost both hands as a child). One that I recall the best is a young woman who wanted to run in some major marathon, but was struck by a car and left with a TBI. One passage stuck with me, that she had to wear diapers. From there the association was set: you could wear diapers, and be in a wheelchair, but NOT have to be mentally handicapped...but at the same time, I WANTED to be that girl at the dinner table with the bib, eating with her hands. It was the only way I could conceive of to wear diapers, be like a little kid, AND be in a wheelchair.

When I was 12 I moved to Ontario to live with my father. I got my first computer, and one of my first Yahoo searches was for "diapers". That's how I discovered the AB/DL community, but it wouldn't be at least another few years until I'd steal a few Promise diapers from my doctor's office (she just kept them in the cupboard in the bathroom!) that I would finally get a chance to wear REAL diapers that fit me. I can remember putting them on and just lying there in bed, realizing the enormity of what I was doing now...and how I was fulfilling what was, essentially, a life long dream.

Over the years my father, stepmother, and younger brothers (first one, then two of them) spent weekends away from home up at the cottage, or with relatives, and I'd often go and buy a bag of Depends and just wear them all weekend. It was GREAT.

I identified very strongly as a "teen baby" back then, but my urge to be disabled kept creeping into things, especially my stories. The FIRST diaper story I ever wrote was about a 16 year old girl who was left an incontinent spastic quadraplegic after a car accident, and was cared for by her older girlfriend.

I've found out recently that my periods of intense fear and nervousness, which I've always had, are apparently genetic. My mother gets them as well, as did her mother and one of her sisters. They're not-quite-panic-attacks, and I generally get really bad ones about once a year, where something will set me off and I'll just have to go sit somewhere quiet, curl up, and cry, but I DO have some very strong fears that really set me off on nervous fits (bees, any money troubles, trouble at my job, being yelled at, being touched on the back [which I have never been able to figure out the root issue of]). I've found, though, that wearing a diaper during these helps somehow. Makes me feel a bit more secure, not nessecarily more confident...but safer, kind of. I have some other quirks related to that, the autistic tendencies of my childhood that never went away, such as my tendency to rock back and forth without really thinking about it, especially if I'm sitting down and distressed, or just really involved with something. Or how sometimes I can just sit still and stare at nothing in particular for a long time...not being interested, but just kind of being blank.

It was that sort of panic-stress reaction, combined with my infamous (within the family) problems with my bladder and bowels (as a child I had a weak bladder, and often had to use the washroom every hour or two, and would cycle between constipation and having to rush to the toilet on a weekly basis), and illness, I began suffering from overflow incontinence in grade 11. It started with wetting the bed and more frequent bathroom trips, but it quickly ended up with several accidents, and my eventual turning to diapers for once for the actual security they were designed for, rather than the security I felt from them. The urologist confirmed that part of it seemed to be a result of my bladder being...I'm not 100% sure how he put it, but it was stretched and wasn't emptying properly, and just wasn't alerting me to the need to empty before it emptied itself. The problem eventually, and slowly, cleared up after several months, though it persisted as bedwetting and some accidents for 5 or 6 months afterwards.

After a few months out of diapers, I came to my parents and told them that I'd like to go back to wearing them. I missed them, and I liked how they felt. My parents reluctantly agreed, and tried to push me for a few years to give them up, but I was adamant and we eventually had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in place that worked well for all of us. So long as I made sure that my sodden diapers (I ALWAYS wore at night, but occasionally during the day, though not often) were gone before they relaly started smelling, my parents ignored me wearing them. I wasn't able to tell them, though, about how much I wanted to be in a wheelchair, or wear a bib at meals, or anything really about my infantalism/pretender/wannabe/devotee-related fantasies and desires.

Just before I went into grade 12 I spent several weeks with a girlfriend I'd known online for a long while. I wore diapers on the entire 18 hour bus ride down, and all the time for several days after that. She was my mommy, and I had the most incredible time with her. I cried when it was time to go, and I think we almost ended up having a much more physical relationship than I was emotionally ready for. But we both decided to break it off, as this long distance thing just didn't work, or at least wasn't working. I think I was also a bit too flaky for her...which I really think I was, to be honest. She DID leave me with four things I still have today, though: two adult sized bibs that she made, a blanket she sewed for me, and a plush dog she bought me as a birthday present.

In grade 13 (OAC), I went to a Catholic school that had one of the special ed classes who's students were the type I'd have associated with on field trips back in elementary school. I clearly recall that two of the students were in reclined wheelchairs, padded in, with cloths or bibs all the time, and that I used their washroom once (the special ed room was where tests were written on computer), and it had a diaper changing table in it.

Over the nearly 4 years since then, I've moved away from my infantalist side and become more of a diaper wearing devotee/wannabe. But I'm slowly curving back, ever so slightly. I've always maintained that desire to be cared for, though not quite as much in a baby way.

A few years back in a text based online RPG (one that was for an actual pen and paper game), I played a 19 year old university student with spina bifida, who had to wear diapers, and who eventually found herself a mommy (another character) who treated her much like a toddler. So there was Caitlin, 19 years old, wearing diapers, in a wheelchair, and being cared for whenever she was home by a loving woman who fed, bathed, changed, dressed, and cared for her. I think THAT character, and the experience of playing her and interacting with others as her, really affected how I've come to understand myself.

So who am I inside? Really, and bluntly?

The inner, little "me", the one who I almost never get to express, is the same age as me. He's 22. But mentally he's between 18 and 24 months. He needs to wear diapers, and though he can feed himself, its only with his hands. He needs someone else to spoon feed him, and he's a very messy eater. He can walk a little if someone helps him along, but spends most of his time in a wheelchair. He can't speak, but makes himself known vocally and through showing affection with hugs, kisses, and smiles, or when he's unhappy by crying, shrieking, or moaning. He keeps his hands to himself, in his lap or up by his chest, but likes to play around with things if they're handed to him, and must be guided in doing things like petting a dog or putting on a coat. If encouraged and helped enough, he can and will play with infant and toddler toys if they're put in front of him, but he needs someone to supervise. If he really gets going, though, with someone holding him up he'll toddle around, giggling, and he really likes colourful cartoon shows with lots of noise (it doesn't matter what kind).

I know how weird that sounds. Its infantalism mixed with a disability fetish. Its the desire to be cared for by someone else, but also to be disabled as well.

My chances of ever finding a parental figure (most likely a mommy...but I'm just bi enough that I might accept the right daddy if I were to find him) willing to accept that are pretty low. Its not something I'd ever be able, or want, to do all the time (which is good...I still need intellectual stimulation and a life), but its still a higher level of care than most ABs require during "play time", and its certianly stranger than most wannabe/pretender relationships.

At the moment I'm content with my diapers, and the anticipation of going back into pullups during the day. One day I'll get a wheelchair, and find places to use it outside. Hell, one day I might be lucky enough to find someone willing to accept even that much (I have problems asking girls out...mainly that the ones I REALLY want to I'm too afraid to, or they live far away, and the ones I DO ask say "no").

But even so, I'm moving more towards diapers and the like becoming a major part of my life and personality. I think part of it is my father, stepmother, and brothers moving to Ottawa...so they're not right there beside me. I feel like I'm becoming more independent of them, whcih means that I'm freer to express myself how I want.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant and self discovery. As I said, I use my blog like that sometimes. Thanks for reading, if you did. Any comments are appreciated...I'll even take criticisms on how weird or perverted I am. If you want to chat with me, I'm on Yahoo! MEssanger under "narxnn".

More Kate in an hour or so.